The modern park is worth attention; some are delightful in the extreme: they are the beauties of creation, terrestrial paradises; they are just what they ought to be, nature cautiously assisted by invisible art. We envy the little being who presides over one--but why mould we envy him? the pleasure consists in _seeing_, and one man may _see_ as well as another: nay, the stranger holds a privilege beyond him; for the proprietor, by often seeing, sees away the beauties, while he who looks but seldom, sees with full effect. Besides, one is liable to be fretted by the mischievous hand of injury, which the stranger seldom sees; he looks for excellence, the owner for defect, and they both find. These proud inclosures, guarded by the growth within, first appeared under the dimension of one or two hundred acres; but fashion, emulation, and the park, grew up together, till the last swelled into one or two thousand. If religions rise from the lowest ranks, the fashions generally descend from the higher, who are at once blamed, and imitated by their inferiors. The highest orders of men lead up a fashion, the next class tread upon their heels, the third quickly follow, then the fourth, fifth, &c. immediately figure after them. But as a man who had an inclination for a park, could not always spare a thousand acres, he must submit to less, for a park must be had: thus Bond, of Ward-end, set up with thirty; some with one half, till the very word became a burlesque upon the idea. The design was a display of lawns, hills, water, clumps, &c. as if ordered by the voice of nature; and furnished with herds of deer. But some of our modern parks contain none of these beauties, nor scarcely land enough to support a rabbit. I am possessed of one of these jokes of a park, something less than an acre:--he that has none, might think it a _good_ joke, and wish it his own; he that has more would despise it: that it never was larger, appears from its being surrounded by Sutton Coldfield; and that it has retained the name for ages, appears from the old timber upon it. The manor of King's-hurst was disposed of by the Mountforts, about two hundred years ago, to the Digbys, where it remains. COLESHILL. One mile farther east is _Coleshill-hall_, vested in the crown before, and after the conquest; purchased, perhaps, of William Rufus, by Geoffrey de Clinton, ancestor to the present Duke of Newcastle. In 1352, an heiress of the house of Clinton, gave it, with herself, to Sir John de Mountfort, of the same family with Simon, the great Earl of Leicester, who fell, in 1265, at Evesham, in that remarkable contest with Henry the Third.